DIARY
Flug had a lucky week for sure
by Robert LaFrance
My friend Flug
(Richard LaFrance, no relation) was beaming when he came over for breakfast
yesterday morning. (I have yet to determine why he can’t cook his own
breakfasts).
“Four times in
the past twenty-four hours I have received good news,” he said as he started
wolfing down my cheese omelette. I started making myself a peanut butter
sandwich to have with cold pizza.
“First,” he said
through the omelette, “my divorce from Ellen is now final. My lawyer called
yesterday afternoon and there’s no alimony.” I didn’t have the heart to tell
him that the day before, Ellen had won $225,000 in a lottery.
“Then,” he went
on, oblivious of anything but my &%^$#*$ omelette, “I got a call from Candy
of Computer Services and it seems I have won a South Seas cruise. All I had to
do was send $200 to expedite the paperwork. And three, Candy and I might start
going out; we talked a long time. If she can get this weekend off and can book
a flight from the Cayman Islands – I’m sending her some money to help out – we
will be an item.”
I marvelled at
the ease with which Flug could crawl out of one mudhole and leap headlong into
another, likely much deeper.
He wasn’t done.
“And then this morning I was scuba diving on the Internet…”
“You mean
surfing?” I asked.
“Yes…I was
surfboarding on the Internet and went to Facebook where I found a certain ad
that’s going to made me financially comfortable (shall we say?).” He pulled a
piece of notebook paper out of his shirt pocket. “Here’s what it said: Do you want to earn $5000 a month working 10 hours a week. So I
clicked ‘yes’ and I’ll be on my way next week to becoming well off. I just have
to send them $450 in administration fees.”
I
knew there was no way I could talk him out of any of this, so I just wished him
the best. He and Candy deserve each other.
**********************
How many New
Brunswickers realize, when they drive over to Fort Fairfield, or elsewhere in
Maine to get that cheap milk and gas and deprive New Brunswick of tax money
that pays our medical bills, that Maine’s firearm laws are somewhat different
from ours? Do tell.
Referring to the slaughter at the
community college in Oregon and similar occurences, it was amusing but
predictable that, instead of controlling weapons, the American response was to
go out and buy MORE guns. Maine is no exception.
In that state,
anybody who is officially sane, or hasn’t killed more than three people yet,
can buy and carry a handgun (the law refers to ‘pistols’ but there are also
revolvers). They can carry their loaded guns openly in a holster. Remember that
the next time you hear of a good buy at Marden’s in Presque Isle or the IGA in
Fort Fairfield. Your ‘good buy’ could become a ‘goodbye’ if one of those
nutcases doesn’t like your face.
Americans never
seem able to figure out that the more guns that are out there, the more people
are going to be shot. It’s a country ruled by the National Rifle Association.
**********************
Last week or the
week before (the days blur when one is 67) I quoted baseball legend Yogi Berry,
and this week it’s ‘Spaceman’ Bill Lee, a former Montreal Expos pitcher. He is
about my age.
He was
a spaceman all right, and still is. Interviewed by Michael Enwright on the CBC
Radio program ‘Rewind’, he expounded on his theories of pitching and life. Michael asked him how
important it had been to him when he was an active player to get the batter
out.
"I used the
cosmic snowball theory,” the Spaceman said. “I thought: A few million years
from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will
turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it
won't matter if I get this guy out.”
Asked what he thought about mandatory
drug testing for athletes, he said he had believed in drug testing for a long
time. “All through the 1960s I tested everything,” he said.
Another observation from Bill Lee, who
had been a left-handed pitcher: "You have two hemispheres in your brain -
a left and a right side. The left side controls the right side of your body and
right controls the left half. Therefore, left-handers are the only people in
their right minds."
-end-
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